`Mrs. Winterbourne' (pg-13, 1 Hr., 44 Min.)

FAMILY FILMGOER - Jane Horwitz

May 3, 1996|Jane Horwitz

A Cinderella story of limited charm, this hybrid of While You Were Sleeping (PG, 1995) and Sabrina (PG, 1995) may attract kids 10 and up, particularly female Ricki Lake fans.

They'll encounter some profanity, crude language, a verbally abusive ex-boyfriend character, and the fact that Lake is an actress of limited range. She plays a pregnant, broke, single girl traveling by train to Boston. A young couple, Hugh and Patricia Winterbourne (Brendan Fraser and Susan Haskell), also expecting a child, befriend her. A train wreck leaves the couple dead, while she awakes in the hospital, the mother of a newborn son. She's misidentified as Hugh Winterbourne's widow. Enter his wealthy, eccentric mother, Grace (Shirley MacLaine), thrilled to have a daughter-in-law and grandchild, and his sourpuss twin, Bill (also Fraser), suspicious that this "Patricia" is a fake. Will brother Bill fall for her anyway? Will she tell the truth and still be accepted into the family? Guess.

`Celtic Pride' (PG-13, 1 hr., 31 min.)

Boys 10 and up, especially die-hard sports lovers, will glean some amusement from this rather dull tale of a couple of Boston Celtics fans who kidnap a star player from the Utah Jazz so Boston can win Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Dan Aykroyd and Daniel Stern play the wacky perpetrators, and an oddly subdued Damon Wayans is their victim. The allegedly comic aspects of this caper get lost within the genuinely depressing portrait of a couple of guys who put their lives on hold to follow a team. Some profanity and crude language (regarding male genitalia) earn the rating.

`Chungking Express' (PG-13, 1 hr., 43 min.)

Teens who yearn after all that is cool and cutting-edge will find this oddball romantic comedy from Hong Kong the real deal. Created in a whirling, swirling, sometimes jerky video style by director Wong Kar-Wai, it tells two largely unrelated tales about lonely policemen and their love lives. A plainclothes detective, shattered by the loss of his girlfriend, eats 30 cans of pineapple, throws up, then cluelessly befriends a female gangster. A uniformed cop mourning the departure of his girlfriend catches the fancy of a gamine new waitress at his favorite snack shop. She sneaks into his apartment while he's at work, sprucing it up to lift his spirits.

`Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie' (PG-13, 1 hr., 14 min.)

Making a hilarious leap to the big screen, this expanded edition of the Comedy Central cable show will tickle teens (and some younger, particularly boys) who love science fiction and irreverent wit. Crude language and locker-room-style sexual innuendo earn the rating, but it's pretty tame. Just as in the TV show, we join Mike (Michael J. Nelson) and his robot friends, Gypsy (voice of Jim Mallon, who also directed), Tom Servo (Kevin Murphy) and Crow T. Robot (Trace Beaulieu), all imprisoned on a space station by a mad scientist. Dr. Forrester (Beaulieu again) forces them to watch bad movies in a plot to drive them insane. They keep their heads by talking back to the screen. Their hyper-literate patter is deliciously funny.

`Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy' (R, 1 hr., 29 min.)

Those Canadian cutups, the Kids in the Hall, are another Comedy Central cable crew gone cinematic. They're mighty amusing, too, though their rough and often tasteless funny stuff makes Brain Candy a problematic choice for impressionable under-15s. The story, about a drug company that puts a wildly popular antidepressant on the market before testing it, pokes wicked fun at our pill-popping society.

Jane Horwitz reviews movies for The Washington Post and other publications.